DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy

[nando4]

Originally Posted by winkosmosis

I thought I posted in this thread... but apparently not. Why does the Newmodeus website list certain brands? Are these caddies all specific to a brand or are they universal, only dependent on the vertical size?

newmodeus make some system specific caddies, eg: 2510P/2530P. I guess they decide which system have sufficient demand for them to develop a specific caddy.

If there isn't one for your system, could try a generic caddy from the first post of this thread. These caddies are a replica of a 9.5mm or 12.7mm optical drive used in the majority of systems, so likely fit with a mismatched faceplate. Worst case scenario would be needing to dremel the faceplate or removing it all together.

[neko neko]

Hi

I got a pata to sata interface from newmodeus with the board that has jumpers.

The laptop I have is a toshiba satelite pro a120.

When I swap out the cd drive with the hard drive caddy windows xp recognises it, installs the drive and I can access it. As soon as I reboot the 2nd hdd is not recognised in xp or at bios.

I read earlier in the thread someone else had the same problem and changed the jumpers and it worked. I've now tried every possible jumper config and still no joy.

When I reboot I get a cdrom error before the boot menu loads up. It seems like the bios only wants to see a CD drive on the secondary IDE.

The 2nd hdd is fine as is the caddy because windows recognises it but doesn't on reboot.

The bios is latest version. In the bios doesn't let me change mess with the ide channels ethier.

Is there anything I can do? It's driving me crazy.

Thanks

[nando4]

Originally Posted by neko neko

When I reboot I get a cdrom error before the boot menu loads up. It seems like the bios only wants to see a CD drive on the secondary IDE.

Moral_Hazard reported virtually the same behaviour using the ebay sata-to-pata caddy with his Tecra A9. Hotswapping the optical drive with the caddy after Windows bootup worked fine, but booting with it was as if the caddy was whitelisted by the bios.

My only suggestion was to use R-W Everything to capture the IDE Controller data (0/31/1) when system is working with the optical drive, reloading it in Windows startup when the caddy is attached. Though I believe that to have a low probability of success. I believe the problem is with the ATAPI data being sent to the caddy by the bios.

If you *remove* the optical drive and caddy, load Windows, insert the caddy, then do a "Scan For New Hardware", does it see it? If so, may need to ask newmodeus modify their circuit to incorporate a ~7 second startup delay so that bios boot doesn't see the optical drive at all. Either that, or ask Toshiba for a bios fix, or request a refund from newmodeus for incompatibility reasons.

[webmack]

Hey folks, How goes it?

My caddy arrived (ebay one) and I've put it in, but had to perform surgery on it with a penknife to make it all fit.

Problem is BIOS sees the 320GB WD drive, but Windows 7 detects D:/ and immediately asks to format it. When I click on Format it says its a 95.9GB drive. After I click 'Close' (I dont want to format it, it has data on it that I need) A message pops up saying "Check to see that the disk and drive are connected properly, make sure the disk is not read only, and then try again."

I am not sure if my 'surgery' may have caused problems. I needed to do it to get the connector and the hard drive to fit. During the surgery I accidentaly cut a thin black wire that was going from the circuit board to the LED. There is a also a red wire going the LED. The LED doesnt work, but could it have anything to do with the black wire? I plan to solder it back, but I'm not sure.

Any ideas or how to step through troubleshooting this?

[Fintan]

I suppose the surgery was needed on the outside and not at the connecting side?

The led is an unnecessary feature, could not reasonably cause such problems.

How is the disk doing in an enclosure? Could be worthwhile to check first.

[nando4]

Originally Posted by webmack

Problem is BIOS sees the 320GB WD drive, but Windows 7 detects D:/ and immediately asks to format it. When I click on Format it says its a 95.9GB drive.
...
Any ideas or how to step through troubleshooting this?

Hi Webmack,

Some bios send some strange ATAPI data to the CDROM that appears to be incompatible when attaching a HDD in it's place. *could* see if this is the likely problem by disconnecting the caddy, boot windows, connect the caddy when system is up and running, Scan for New Hardware, test HDD again. Some other ideas:

1. Check transfer modes using hdparm-for-windows. Some bios writes very slow UDMA modes to the caddy:

'hdparm -i /dev/sdb' -> see what it tells you about the UDMA transfer mode. Switch modes using 'hdparm -X udma5 /dev/sdb'. Your drive may be /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc. You'll need to try each until you can identify the string returned is your HDD.

2. Check if you are running 33 or 66Mhz timings as described here.

Enabling/Disabling the ICHxM (ICH8M or older) PATA Port

Try disabling/enabling PATA port using Baredit to see if that makes a difference.

(i) Find RCBA at PCI Device 0/31/0 F0 (4 bytes) using Baredit as shown here.

(ii) Disable the PATA port by writing to memory address RCBA+0x3418h, bit 1=1. It's the second bit from the right on this screenshot. -> Scan New Hardware.. IDE port should disappear. Disabling the IDE port in this way is documented in the ICH7M datasheet.

(iii) Enable PATA port, RCBA+0x3418h, bit1=0 -> Scan New Hardware. See if it makes a difference.

If this solve the problem, the writes using baredit can be automated into your startup folder.
That's about it. Cutting the LED cable will not make a difference to the operation.

Reset the device

Use the "-w perform device reset (DANGEROUS)" hdparm parameter to reset the PATA device.

hdparm -i /dev/sda  :& identify the correct drive
hdparm -w /dev/sda  :& perform reset

[crayonyes]

Okay now, I just received my WD3200BEKT today and here's some pics with ebay caddy

Thanks 4 the great post nando4!

some benchmark result with WD3200BEKT in caddy:


more: PerformanceTest and atto benchmarks


The 12.7mm sata-to-pata ebay caddy's faceplate does flex, and I'm having a hardtime pulling up the caddy for hotswap because it fits tightly.
And the HDD LED is also the same like 9.5mm ebay caddy. It only blinks on caddy
I'm positive the same modification shown here can be applied to the 12.7mm ebay caddy.

Cheers!

[crayonyes]

nando4, I'm having problem with hotswap feature,
when the notebook starts without any ODD/caddy plugged in,
and I tried to plug in the hdd caddy, it will not show the hdd.
Scan new hardware doesn't detect the inserted hdd.

But if the notebook starts with device in it, I can hotswap fine..
Now is it not meant to be played that way.. or am I missing something?

my drive interface is PATA if that helps? Thanks!

edit: and can we boot from hdd caddy? if we can anyone knows how?

[nando4]

Originally Posted by crayonyes

when the notebook starts without any ODD/caddy plugged in,
and I tried to plug in the hdd caddy, it will not show the hdd.
Scan new hardware doesn't detect the inserted hdd.

But if the notebook starts with device in it, I can hotswap fine..
Now is it not meant to be played that way.. or am I missing something?

my drive interface is PATA if that helps? Thanks!

edit: and can we boot from hdd caddy? if we can anyone knows how?

Do you have a bios menu to allow bootup from a optical drive? The bios would refer to optical drive, just need to think that optical drive=2.5" HDD in caddy.

Quite likely your bios switches off the PATA port if it doesn't find an optical drive. Use steps here to enable the PATA port.

[crayonyes]

Originally Posted by nando4

Do you have a bios menu to allow bootup from a optical drive? The bios would refer to optical drive, just need to think that optical drive=2.5" HDD in caddy.

Quite likely your bios switches off the PATA port if it doesn't find an optical drive. Use steps here to enable the PATA port.

Bootup from optical won't work, I think my system is bypassing the ODD bcause it found a HDD not ODD device

for disable/enable the pata I found that my RCBA is FED18001,
but when I changed the bit 15 in FED1B418 to 1, the one affected was Integrated webcam (?)